I thoroughly enjoyed Sense and Sensibility, even though it’s not a film I would ordinarily have chosen to see. Had I realised the trailer was highlighting some of the story’s most heightened moments, I’m not sure I would have found myself in the cinema at all.

Ultimately, I went in expecting quite a silly but captivating and potentially heartwarming love story. I certainly expected Fiona Shaw’s Mrs Jennings to feature more prominently, rather than simply being the annoying extended relation that no one can stand, yet everyone actually adores. Quite where she sat on the family tree had long since escaped me.

The cast is stacked, and they deliver brilliantly in a world of decadence, maddening hierarchy and social tensions, with men stomping around like they own everything they can see. More interesting, though, is the desperate attempt to preserve a lifestyle baked in indulgence, even as the class structures supporting it begin to unravel.

It becomes amusing, and increasingly absurd, just how many people become entwined in, and quite literally dance around, the film’s major plot points. The huge ensemble adds to the decadence and pretence of it all, while at the centre, genuine love gets in the way of what should be relatively simple, transactional engagements designed to keep the family afloat.

I don’t want to mansplain the plot of Sense and Sensibility, but some context is probably useful. Both sisters find themselves navigating variations of the same romantic predicament. There’s a strange repetition to their love lives, but perhaps that’s the point. What separates their stories isn’t necessarily what happens to them, but how differently they respond when it does.

It took me a moment to realise that the aspect ratio of the film was not, in fact, a clever conceit that would widen as the characters developed and their world opened up. Neither was it a mistake on the part of Odeon Greenwich.

What captivated me most was how vast and beautiful the film is, with such obvious care taken over every element, yet how intimate and theatrical it manages to feel. There were moments when I almost forgot I was watching a film and felt instead as though I were watching something broadcast from the National Theatre.

There’s a sense of nostalgia to the way it’s presented, but it never feels like a gimmick. The unusual aspect ratio becomes part of the storytelling itself, somehow containing all of that decadence without diminishing it.

Perhaps that’s why I kept waiting for the trick.

There isn’t one.

I didn’t feel compelled to dissect or give 2026 context to any part of this film. It simply tells its story, seemingly unconcerned with justifying why that story needs to be told again. Perhaps it says something about the world we live in now that such straightforward storytelling feels quietly radical. Sense and Sensibility doesn’t need to reinvent itself for me to appreciate the performances, artistry and sheer escapism of it all.

I’m not familiar with the source material or the 1995 Emma Thompson film, which always enters the group chat whenever Jane Austen comes into conversation. Admittedly, that’s a rare occurrence. There’s not even a group chat. It’s just me.

That lack of familiarity was actually helpful. I didn’t have another adaptation sitting in my head or an attachment to the novel that this version had to compete with. I could simply experience this Sense and Sensibility for what it was.

And now I feel compelled, and genuinely excited, to pick up the Jane Austen novel.

Because after spending two hours in this beautiful, decadent and faintly absurd world, I’ve found myself wondering about the woman who wrote it while living in the society it depicts. Austen will undoubtedly have her own voice in the novel, and I wonder whether that offers an altogether different perspective from the one presented on screen.

What did she think of it all?

For a film I probably wouldn’t have chosen to see had I known quite what I was getting into, leaving the cinema wanting to find that out is undoubtedly a huge win.